72 The Irish Naturalist. July, 



gathered from historical evidence. The interesting and 

 celebrated tale of the " Tain Bo Cualnge " comes to us in 

 several versions from. about the tenth century, although 

 the original is probably much older. It contains few 

 descriptions that might enable us to identify the breeds to 

 which allusion is made, but there is enough to justify 

 the belief that importations of cattle had already occurred 

 in those remote times. In Mrs. Hutton's beautiful poem 

 in which the whole story is told in a most attractive manner, 

 we read of a bull whose hooves and head were white, the 

 rest of his body being red, as though he had been dyed with 

 partar-red, and further on the author cells us how More- 

 vega threatened to overwhelm Cucullin by leading against 

 him a hundred red and hornless heifers.^ As Prof. Wilson 

 has shown, the Celtic breed of cattle was originally black 

 and horned. Hence the red bull and the red hornless 

 heifers were importations or the produce of such. 



One of the foremost investigators on the origin of 

 European domesticated cattle was the late Prof. Riitimeyer. ^ 

 The discovery in Switzerland among the rubbish heaps of the 

 lake-dwellings of a large number of skulls and skeletons 

 of cattle that had lived in the country many centuries ago 

 formed the basis of these researches. He was able to dis- 

 tinguish the remains of three races of oxen, all of which 

 had lived in Switzerland during the Stone Age. It cannot 

 be computed with any degree of accuracy about how many 

 years ago Europe passed through the Stone Age. Certain 

 it is that it was long before the Christian era, and that it 

 lasted for miany centuries. The Stone Age in Europe with its 

 primitive culture was coexistent with a high state of civiliza- 

 tion in Egypt. Riitimeyer named the three breeds tro- 

 choceros, primigenius, and hrachyceros, and they all had 

 been domesticated in those remote times. It is interesting 

 to note that to the last race belong the Kerry variety 

 of cattle and that of Brittany. The same breed has been 

 met with in ancient deposits in Great Britain, in Sweden, 

 Holland, and many other parts of Europe. The name 



3 Hutton, Mary A. : The Tain, Dublin, 1907. 



* Riitimeyer, L. : Fauna der Pfahlbauten der Schweiz. Basel, 1861. 



